Wow! The Lord has been revealing so much in the last 24 hours that I feel like my head and heart are going to explode. He is so good! He kept me up until 3 AM this morning downloading stuff about the state of the church in Roanoke. I kept turning the light off to go to sleep, but then he would say something else and I would have to turn the light back on to write it down. This went on for almost three hours...
Anyway, I haven't sorted through everything He showed me yet, but the meat of it is that He is about to strengthen the church in Roanoke and bring freedom from bondage that has caused division and weakness for many years. I am so excited about it! I will probably share more about it in a later post once I have gained some additional clarity. But in this post I want to share some things that He revealed before He started talking to me about Roanoke...
The whole 3-hour journey last night started with the Lord teaching me about His glory. This is something that I hope will strengthen you and bring you into a place of greater victory. It was a new revelation for me, so maybe it will be for you as well. I was getting ready to go to sleep, and I was feeling a little bit oppressed and weary. I was praying about it and asking the Lord to help me. He brought to mind the scriptures in the OT that talk about the glory of the Lord filling the temple. The Lord reminded me of 2 Chronicles 5:13-14:
"and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison on praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with the trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, 'For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever,' the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God."
The Lord then reminded me that we as believers are now the temple of God, and He began to show me that the relationship between worshiping Him and the glory of God filling the temple still exists today. Worship still releases God's glory into the temple! Naturally, I lifted my hands up to the Lord and began worshipping Him, thanking Him for His goodness. I began asking Him to come fill me, the temple, with His glory. His presence began to fall on me and fill me. The oppression lifted, and revelation began to flow. This is what I wrote down about the glory in the middle of the night/early morning:
Worship releases God's glory. Cultivating a worship-filled life will lead to a Spirit-filled, glory-filled life. Worshipping the Lord ushers His presence into my spirit. Being continually filled with the glory of God through an attitude of worship will insure that I walk in the Spirit, crucify the flesh, and triumph over temptation. I will carry an abiding glory by worshipping Jesus.
When the glory of the Lord fills the temple, the works of the flesh are cut off (the priests could not stand to minister). The knee of the flesh is bowed in His presence. We can exist in a place of abiding glory where the flesh is crucified and the light of His glory burns from within us to such a degree that darkness cannot triumph in or around us. We can then say with Paul, that we no longer live but that Christ lives in us, where the truth that "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 John 4:4) becomes a tangible manifestation in our daily lives. Where the pressure of God's abiding presence in us pushes back the pressure of the darkness around us and He reigns in and through us until even our shadows are filled with the light of God.
As we continue to press into His heart through worship He will carry us from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) until we reach a place of abiding fullness in the Spirit. We must lift Him up until the cloud of His presence brings us to our knees. He will meet us and turn over the tables in our hearts until we become temples of His abiding glory! "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised" (Psalm 96:4 NASB).
There is so much more to share. I will probably write some more on this later. Until then, keep lifting Him up! Blessings!
